The best way to celebrate Thanksgiving is to recognize the wonderful work God has done for our salvation, which did not come without the ultimate cost, the sacrifice of His Son. This was done once and for all.

My father used to tell me anything worth doing was worth doing right the
first time. If you have time to do it the second time, you have time to
do it right the first time.
As fathers go, he was right. It seems most people have not learned this
lesson, least of all politicians who are supposedly serving the
interests of their constituency. I know there are good politicians in
America today. Nobody seems to know who they are, though.
The reason I have been thinking about this is I'm sitting here indulging
in the delicate aroma floating in from the kitchen where the Gracious
Mistress of the Parsonage has begun her ritual of roasting the
Thanksgiving turkey. I say turkey, but really, she is roasting three
turkeys. One is for our family Thanksgiving dinner and the other two
are for the church Thanksgiving dinner.
Somewhere along the line, probably years before she met me, she learned
the magnificent secret of doing things right the first time. Not like
some people we hear about these days who don't have time to do it right
the first time, but seem to have plenty of time to do it over and over
again, sometimes four times.
Anything worth doing right the first time demands planning. If anyone
knows planning, it certainly is my wife. If things were left up to me,
nothing would ever get done. I plan to learn how to plan someday, but
my plans seem to have fallen apart.
In our home, it begins about the middle of October when my wife says
rather pensively, "Let's see. Thanksgiving is about five weeks away.
Should we have a turkey this year?"
I can never tell if this is a real question, a rhetorical question or if
she is trying to set me up for something. Believe me; I've been set up
so many times I have a hard time lying down. For the first hundred
years of our marriage, I always said, turkey. After all, what else do
you have at Thanksgiving time?
However, this year was a little different. When I responded with my
usual answer she said, "But we've had turkey for years. Aren't you
growing bored of turkey?"
If there's one thing I don't ever get tired of it's turkey. You can do
so many things with turkey. There is roast turkey, sliced turkey
sandwiches, turkey salad and turkey soup just to name a few.
The only problem at our house is, the turkey rarely survives the first
day, which is a tribute, not so much to our consumption as a family as
to the genius of the family chef. I have often wondered what turkey
soup really tastes like.
This expertise in the direction of the Thanksgiving roast turkey did not
come without cost. It took years for my wife to master the art of
roasting a turkey. Unfortunately, much of this practice was on Yours
Truly. She has been roasting me for years and still complains that I'm
not quite done yet. That really burns me up.
Only last week she complained I was a little hard on the outside and
rather soft on the inside. I was tempted to shift the blame on her but
when it comes to this area; I am more of a lame duck than a finely
roasted turkey. My philosophy is along these lines; I'd rather let
things happen and then try to adjust to the consequences.
My good wife is of the opinion that you create your own consequences.
Moreover, when she says this she is usually looking at me a little
askew.
"Don't you know that the Thanksgiving Turkey does not roast itself?"
Being the lame duck I am, that thought never played with my mind. I have
always enjoyed the results of the roasted turkey without a thought
about how it got to my table.
While I was enjoying the aroma of the turkey roasting in the kitchen, I
came up with several suggestions along these lines.
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